Mazal Tov, she’s now a woman!
There’s something special about planning a bas mitzvah. I haven’t yet had the zechus to make a bar mitzvah, but I’m deep in the throes of planning my second bas mitzvah.
Bas Mitzvah parties are celebrated so differently from community to community. Where I live, there is no standard operating procedure for a bas mitzvah celebration. Classmates aren’t allowed to attend each other’s bas mitzvah, which eliminates a huge chunk of the ubiquitous “everybody does this” or “everyone has that,” and we each get to customize our bas mitzvah parties. Sure, you ask around for ideas, but ultimately, it’s each girl for herself. We get to throw ourselves into planning a party that speaks to the bas mitzvah girl herself, and incorporates elements of her uniqueness and personality.
If you’ve been reading any number of my articles, you probably know that I am not going to give you a pictorial of a magnificent bas mitzvah tablescape, or sumptuous recipes for a feast fitting this momentous occasion. Not because I think these can’t be valuable and precious ways to beautify a girl’s transition to a woman in kllal yisroel, but because they are way beyond my forte. Instead, I want to share some of the foundations at the core of our bas mitzvah parties. Though your community and your family may celebrate bas mitzvahs differently, perhaps some of these ideas can be implemented into your own affairs as well.
Mother-Daughter Time
This is my favorite aspect of bas mitzvah planning. Baruch Hashem, family life gets hectic, and we can’t always give our children the one-on-one time they deserve. When we plan a bas mitzvah, we do it together. It starts about a year or so in advance, when daughter dear wakes up and says, “You know, next year is my bas mitzvah.” It’s almost always followed, if not in that very same sentence, then at some point in the next couple of days, “At my bas mitzvah party let’s have/do/make” and I know the wheels in her brain have officially started turning.
I personally can’t make concrete plans that far in advance, so that is the point where I say, “We can shmooze about it now; we’ll do actual planning closer up.”
And shmooze we do, at every opportunity. Without the pressure of making decisions, I hear her out, listening to her hopes, her ideas, her preferences. As we get closer, we whip out our notebooks (yeah, we’re old-fashioned like that!) and start planning in earnest. We discuss menu, and while we usually stick to the typical pasta and salad fare, we make sure to include the guest of honor’s favorite foods. For my older daughter, this meant a giant sushi platter, while our current bas mitzvah girl eschewed the standard three or so different salads for a make-your-own-salad bar.
As we get closer to the big day, we carve out some time for our Major Bas Mitzvah Shopping Trip to buy paper goods and any supplies we need for activities or decor. I let the bas mitzvah girl choose her paper goods, deciding on a color scheme either with or without some minimal input from Mommy. We might not nail that perfect look (I never did figure out if lavender and gold go well together, and how much gold is too much gold!) but we get to spend some really fun and beautiful moments together!
What Makes Her Special
This is where the difference between a bas mitzvah and bar mitzvah affair come into play. We’re not simply choosing a hall, a band, and a caterer. We get to plan a party based on what makes our bas mitzvah girl unique. Once we’ve gotten past the shmoozing stage and into the planning phase, one of the first things we do is choose a pasuk that is our theme. Whether or not everything we do at the bas mitzvah relates to the theme depends on a lot of moving parts, but we start with putting the pasuk on our invitation. The theme reflects on what makes this particular girl unique, to highlight her strengths and specialness.
Our daughter who is full of optimism and gratitude went with “odeh Hashem b’chol libi,” which was so appropriate because it also reflected all of our feelings at celebrating such a beautiful simcha. We integrated this into the decor by hanging the pasuk in large letters above our dining room. The bas mitzvah girl herself traced them, cut them out and spray painted them silver to match the color scheme. We actually kept them hanging until we were forced to take them down to paint the room a couple of years later.
We gave out gratitude scrapbooks that turned out to be both a souvenir and an activity. (More on the scrapbook soon!) My daughter wanted to decorate mirrors as an activity, and I really did want to accommodate in the spirit of giving her agency. I wanted to find a way, though to make it less about vanity and more appropo of our theme, so we included with the decorating supplies homemade stickers that said in elegant print: “Thank you Hashem for making me beautiful just the way I am.” It was a great compromise between our visions, as well as an important message in body positivity for girls at that vulnerable age.
Our current bas mitzvah girl, who radiates sweet and sincere joy, chose “Ivdu es Hashem b’simchah, bo’ooh l’fanav birnanah” as her theme. She also has a really nice voice, which we began taking note of only recently. I took her to a recording studio to record her own original bas mitzvah song, which I am putting to a slide show with pictures of her growing up. We will show it as one activity at her bas mitzvah. She also wanted to do jewelry making, so we will be doing that as well. I haven’t found a way to connect that to the theme – aside for supplying musical note charms as one of the options – but that’s okay! I suggested decorating tamborines, but she didn’t want to go with something she had never heard of before! She actually wanted to do challah baking in addition to jewelry making, which is such a precious way to celebrate being a bas mitzvah, but I had to nix it in terms of space and practicality. Perhaps we will do a smaller, more intimate hafrashas challah one night instead.
I also didn’t do much in terms of incorporating the theme into the decor, which shouldn’t have been too hard if I had only put a bit more thought into it, other than hurriedly ordering some musical note confetti to spread on the table, which we will do if it comes on time and if it doesn’t look too tacky!
My Own Self
In the throes of planning this bas mitzvah, I noticed that not only do I incorporate elements of my daughters’ talents and strengths, I’ve managed to channel my own creativity as well. Every Yiddeshe mamma needs an outlet for her creative juices, and planning a simchah like this is a wonderful opportunity to unleashe them. For others, this might mean throwing themselves into baking fancy confections (we just daven hard that ours come out in one piece!) constructing elaborate centerpieces, setting a magnificent table. In my case, each of the bas mitzvahs I’ve planned so far incorporated something I’ve written.
The gratitude journal from the first bas mitzvah was my idea and my daughter graciously indulged it. I wrote a poem about thanking Hashem, a story about my daughter when she was younger and a story about her namesake, my great-grandmother, both depicting the midah of gratitude. I had a graphic designer design a cover and each of those three written pages. The rest of the pages were blank, for each person to scrapbook on their own, including everything that they are grateful for.
As for my second daughter, I got to write her a song, which is a hobby I don’t often engage in. While obviously the bas mitzvah is all about the newly-minted woman, and I’m happy to take a step back and watch her shine, it’s an extra meaningful bonus to be able to quietly weave a little bit of my own self into the festivities.
The Spiritual Connection
In all the frenzy of party planning, of eagerly conveying what gifts we’d like when generous relatives ask, of deciding between lavender and cream or silver and pink, it’s easy to forget what this celebration is all about. In all of our schmoozing and debating, I try to remind my girls what a monumental privilege it is to officially be counted among the exalted women of kllal yisroel. All of their avodas Hashem until now was practice; now it’s the real deal. I encourage them to choose a personal kabbalah, something small but meaningful, that they can take upon themselves. This is their special way of taking their first steps into adulthood with a deeper connection to Hashem. They can choose to share their kabbalah with me or keep it to themselves; I don’t push. I just feel that as their bas mitzvah draws closer, we get sucked into many materialistic thoughts and conversations as we work to pull the nuts and bolts of party planning together. I want them to reserve a little bit of headspace for things that truly matter. So far, they have risen up to the occasion beautifully.
Shep Nachas
Our twelve year old girls are still girls, thought they are halachically women. There are petty sides to them, immaturities that may take more years to clear up than we’d hope. But as each of my daughters becomes a bas mitzvah, I take a good look at her and notice how much she has grown; I try to look deeply into her neshamah and recognize what a truly beautiful person she had become. In this moment, the flaws pale in comparison to that breathtaking beauty. In truth, there is so much good to be found in each of our girls.
This one might answer back to us, but she is so gentle and loving with her baby brother; this one doesn’t like to daven, but she clears the Shabbos table every seudah before we ask, and she’ll even sweep the floor. When we look for those qualities, we find them, and we can begin to truly appreciate the treasure we have been granted even as we spend the rest of their young adulthood working with them to smooth out some of those rougher edges that come with the territory of being human.
When I speak at their bas mitzvah, I try to bring out some of those beautiful middos so that our guests can be inspired and learn from them as well, hopefully coming away not only satiated on a physical level, but also on a deeper one.
This is so beautiful and meaningful. Thanks so much. Fradl, your children are lucky to have you as a mother.
Ditto to the above comment. I love how you put so much tochen into the planning and make it so meaningful. Your girls (and the rest of the family) are lucky to have you.
Wow! So so beautiful!